Céline Semaan was around four years old when a bomb fell on the building she lived in in Beirut. Afterwards, she stood up on a table and shook her tiny hips while her grandmother sang, and great- uncle played the oud. “As I belly dance on the table, I am transforming my family’s pain into joy,” she writes. This is the opening scene of her new book A Woman is a School, which releases this month, and her childhood years during the war in Beirut are pivotal to her eventual understanding of identity and activism. “Children develop extraordinary gifts of resistance and resilience,” she writes.
Over the years, Céline has been labelled a “troublemaker”, “rebel without a cause”, an “angry feminist” and “just plain crazy.” She started conceptualising online creative platform Slow Factory in 2008 and launched it in 2012 to raise awareness around climate change, sustainability and social justice. In addition to its campaigns and fellowships, Slow Factory has amassed a thriving following of nearly one million on Instagram, where it galvanises activism and educates users about everything from injustices facing indigenous populations to the climate crisis that threatens all of us. With the release of A Woman is a School, she launches the platform’s publishing imprint: Slow Factory Press: Books for Collective Liberation.
Céline tells MOJEH that she started writing the book, which is part memoir and part political critique on colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism and white supremacy, in 2020. “The decision to focus on the memoir was important, as the stories collected as data points offer a powerful framework for liberation that aren’t difficult to grasp, but are both cultural and political, which is the essence of my work,” she explains. Drawing from her personal experiences, Céline invites readers to walk in the shoes of those affected by war and displacement due to colonialism. “The war, whether talked about or not, remained in the bodies of the next generation, and the one after that,” she writes. To describe the impact of trauma, she uses the metaphor of a mountain of rocks piled up, comprising pain, wounds, shame and family secrets. “Each successive generation attempts to push through the rocky edifice and eventually these rebellious youths, like irrepressible seedlings, penetrate the walls of the mountain through cracks and crevices,” she writes.
This rebellious essence is what Céline champions through Slow Factory - a platform that aims to awaken moral compasses and blaze a trail of enlightenment. Central to this path, according to Céline, is decentralising whiteness, unlearning limiting beliefs imposed by colonial oppression and breaking free of the white gaze that we have been programmed to think from. When Céline moved from Beirut to Montreal, she became a refugee in a highly Westernised Canada. Later, when moving to Paris to study shortly after the September 11 attacks in New York, she had to adjust to living in the land of her country of origin’s coloniser, as well as witnessing anti-Arab racism. These experiences all pushed young Céline to reflect about the ways in which identity is informed by Western stereotypes and prejudices. “Experiencing the world on the fringes of collapsing colonial empires has afforded many of us who have lived through it a sharpness of perception that translates into the ability to provide much-needed perspective,” she writes.
Each chapter begins with a brief description of a cassette soundtrack that sets the theme and tone. The story is non-chronological, and anecdotes are interwoven with reflection and analysis. Throughout, Céline proposes a radical dismantling and reimagining of established systems, from the fashion industry to the education sector. “Jobs are no longer the ultimate goal and a traditional career makes little to no sense in this time of chaos and climate change,” she writes, explaining that today’s youth are rejecting the professional, corporate world and the culture of workaholism that was once thought of as essential for success. “This book is timely, rare — given that books like this are very rare — and it is an important witness of time,” Céline tells MOJEH.
One memory that she often refers to is the time when she was booked to fly from Paris back to Beirut — the same day that Israel bombed the airport in Beirut, during what was later dubbed the July War of 2006. The topic of Palestine comes up frequently in A Woman is a School. Parts were written at the end of 2023, during the attacks on Gaza and subsequent anti-Arab racism across the West, and Céline says that the genocide of the Palestinians motivated her to bring the publication date of the book forward. “Making the decision to leave my initial book deal to embark on my own journey in publishing became clearer to me after October 2023, when the publishing industry started to exclude Arab authors. It was clear to me that our voice, perspective and wisdom were needed now more than ever and that we deserved to say what needed to be said on our own terms,” she explains. “We’ve always dreamed of having our own imprint, but the timing of launching the book made it even more pressing.”
Céline describes the wars she has lived through, and how she and her family would watch the news from different channels and mediums, before piecing the ‘truth’ together. Posting infographics that are widely shared online, Slow Factory has been incredibly vocal about Palestine, particularly in highlighting the violence against children at the hands of the Israeli state. Congo and Sudan are also focal points of the platform’s activism in demanding justice for marginalised communities across the Global South. “Solidarity sits between compassion and loyalty,” writes Céline.
The momentum fuelling recent brand boycotts has shown how fashion is also inextricably linked with solidarity, and one chapter in Céline’s book is dedicated to fashion and politics. Beyond highlighting the waste and carbon emissions that the fashion industry is responsible for, she illustrates how it too feeds into the celebration of a Western identity. “When we are experiencing a constant feed of what modernity, beauty, wealth and fashion is, that feed begins to obscure the erasure of our own cultures, identities and traditions,” writes Céline, who recalls the opening of fast fashion giant Zara in Beirut, on her 16th birthday — the epitome of fashion colonialism. Local businesses suffered, as people “indoctrinated to loathe” their own culture wanted to dress more “European”. Céline emphasises that indigenous communities have lost the “soul” of their styles in flocking to Western fashion norms. “Our ancestors’ jewellery and fashion had symbolism and spiritual connection. Everything had meaning,” she writes. “What has happened to make us walk around in a dangerous yet fascinating world without our protections, talismans or embroidery made by women in a village, praying and infusing garments with spirit?”
In addition to her political critiques, Céline pays homage to indigenous customs and cultures, highlighting the communitarian spirit of the Global South as opposed to the myth of individualism embraced by the West. She describes becoming like a “proxy” for her mother at age seven, in charge of two younger siblings, and how it taught her about deep listening and conflict resolution. “A woman is a school, if you teach her, you teach an entire generation,” is a line she borrowed from 2011 film The Light in Her Eyes about Muslim feminism in Damascus. It is entirely befitting as the title of this book, which aims to ignite and awaken what Céline calls a “joyful productive healing energy.”
“The sacred rebellion always brewing in my spirit is there to keep me in love with life,” writes Céline, who urges readers to seek out and channel their own. “We are collectively the school we’ve been waiting for,” she continues. “We hold far more wisdom than all the schools combined. We are the school.”
